Shells

We echo within like sea shells.

The f*****g psyches tell him to look within and all that bloody jazz, but it's all bullshit. He's killed guys, and that's the end of it. Guys, and girls, soldiers and civilians, until the sound of gunfire drilled into his head and out the otherwise and took everything in the way with it

It's like those stupid shells his mum showed him once when he was young. 'Course, he didn't think they were stupid then, but what did he know. Just a kid who had no idea what it felt like to hold a cold piece of steel in your hand that explodes in hotness and judges whoever's in front with a wham bam and kiss goodbye, say hi to God for me and give him the finger because I'm a murderer now and I guess I'll be having fun in hell thank you Uncle Sam. Sound like the sea, the story went. Like fish and sharks and shipwrecks and dumped human s**t and everything, when all it really is is a couple of swirls of air and a gullible little ear.

Maybe he should just go ahead and turn himself into a shell with it's lies and emptiness and get over it. Or crawl into a shell. Whatever the metasimile is, f**k it all.

Everything's empty.

Author's Note

Written in 13 minutes for a flash fiction prompt at a chat event along with Lines, edited a little after. Prompt was "we echo within like sea shells." This, like my other short story Second Street was sort of a challenge to myself to use swearing realistically. Not my usual style.

This was was pretty good at breaking my haitus. Feedback would be cool.

Totally didn't realise until I was posting this the double meaning between sea shells and artillery shells also. Hmm.

Reviews

[TheSweet]

I must admit that I assumed the double meaning between artillery shells and sea shells was intentional until I noticed you mention it in the note - kind of works, though. Your subconscious seems to aid you xP
I did like this write; it was quite dark and had a ranting feel. The only thing I wasn't sure about was that I didn't feel the human behind it very well. It does well of saying thoughts and portrays ideas, but I guess in such few words it's gonna be hard to get the empathy across. So that being said - I thought it was a pretty good job. Thanks for sharing :)

[Jazique]

Can I say I'm with angel a little on this, I know I've been gone for a while but, I feel like we've gone down a dark road. You must have looked at war from its ugly vantage point, one that most soldiers probably went through because the excuse that they were out there was to serve their country, wasn't enough for the souls that were lost by their hand. It wasn't bad just beware of other opinions but, I get it some battles didn't make sense like ww1. If only people didn't blow things into proportions and made different moves then maybe people wouldn't have to feel the way your character does. .

[Treo LeGigeo]

Thank you for the very nice review!

Uh, I do feel I must point out that this is 100% NOT from experience :-) As I said above, it's certainly not my usual piece, just something I was trying out for this exercise. Exploring the emotions and psychologies of war does seem to be a recurring theme in my writing, though. It is all very sad, and can destroy the survivors as much as the victims.

[Jazique]

True that.

[Angel]

Entity, my friend...


you scare me...